queens museum

Every summer there’s a gallery that finds an occasion to launch a cat show, and this season is no different. Start the week off at Con Artist Collective, which will host a show demonstrating artists love for kitties. Consider that show a warm up for what’s to come. Thursday in Gowanus, we’ll see what happens when artists are given access to a treasure trove discarded electronics. We can’t wait. On Friday, head out to this week’s latest artist zine festival and wrap the week up Sunday with the 25 anniversary of Queens Pride at the Queens Museum. It’s a one day pop-up exhibition looking at the history of the event and bound to be both informative and joyful.

A decade ago, if you said that Manhattanites would be regularly heading to Queens for their culture fix it’s unlikely most people would’ve believed you outside of Long Island City. But now the borough is increasingly our go-to destination for art events. From Marni Kotak’s artist talk at Microscope Gallery tonight (just on the Brooklyn side of the Ridgewood border) to the surrealist pop-up “DEBTBANK” at the Queens Museum on Sunday, everyone should be spending most of the week East of the East River.

Other Queens highlights include Lex Brown’s solo show and performance at Deli Gallery on Friday night and a three-day preview of a Meredith Monk performance at Queenslab in Ridgewood. Arguably the most fun to be had, though, will be the 2017 Flux-a-Thon benefit in Long Island City. That interactive parade will wind from Flux Factory to neighboring Plaxall Gallery for prizes and an hours-long dance party.

This is a bit of a slow week in New York’s art world. That’s a good thing, because everyone will need their energy for our goth party next week.

Nevertheless, we managed to track down at least one art outing per day that looks promising. Tuesday, Wong Kit Yi is closing her show of Arctic-specific performance documentation at P [exclamation]. Karaoke is rumored to be involved. Wednesday, Hercules Art Studio Program is opening a show about painting and the body that couldn’t feel more relevant to contemporary discourse. Thursday, we found a subversive performance night at Ridgewood’s The Woods, and Friday we’re looking forward to checking out Adrián Villar Rojas’s rooftop installation at the Met. This weekend MoMA opens the must-see Making Space: Women Artists and Postwar Abstraction, and the Queens Museum will host a Sunday book launch of election-woe poetry.

We don’t live in happy times, and that’s starting to show. With the exception of Art404’s video game show opening Wednesday at the AC Institute and Todd Bienvenu’s likely-hilarious beach paintings opening at yours mine & ours, there’s not a lot of lighthearted fun in the art world this week. Hell, even Art404’s show features a virtual reality space where the viewer is suffocated by news.

The doom-and-gloom kicks off with Bortolami Gallery’s University of Disasters Tuesday night, though Equity Gallery is opening Not the End on Friday, another show about anxiety with a somewhat more optimistic name. Sunday, the Queens Museum will be opening Italian artist Marinella Senatore’s solo show, which deals with protest and social space. Obviously, we all have the dire political situation on our minds.

Welcome to the new normal. We at AFC have noticed a decline in artistic output from Brooklyn’s DIY scene as of late, while commercial galleries and institutions in Manhattan (and a few in Queens) have been gearing-up for battle mode with politically-charged programming. We’re hoping this is because everyone in Brooklyn is too busy thinking about resistance, and not because they’ve fled the country.

Tuesday night, The New School is hosting a talk about female bodies online, and Wednesday, the New Museum is opening a massive Raymond Pettibon show. After checking it out, head down the block to ICP, where curators will be discussing the loaded Perpetual Revolution: The Image and Social Change. More talks will come Thursday, such as the Brooklyn Museum’s call to defend immigrants and the Flux Factory/ABC No Rio potluck/opening/discussion about artists’ mutual aid in times like these. Friday night, take a break from political angst to get lost in the dreamy paintings of Jordan Kasey at Nicelle Beauchene, or the likely dreamier office set E.S.P. TV has staged at Pioneer Works. The weekend brings more great art and opportunities for creative resistance: be sure to check out the Queens Museum’s event to build climate change resistance coalitions between artists and activists.

Barbican resident and photographer Anton Rodriguez has launched an ambitious project to document every one of his 2,000 neighbors’ apartments in the famed brutalist landmark. Mostly, this makes me want to move there. [The Guardian]

Lawyer Pierce O’Donnell is suing his business associate, art adviser and New Age spiritualist Maitreya Kadre, because they bought a painting together that may or may not be a Jackson Pollock. Apparently she keeps the painting locked up in a storage facility, and has been stymieing attempts to authenticate it. What? [Los Angeles Times]

Jeffrey Uslip has unexpectedly resigned as curator at CAM St. Louis. His departure comes on the heels of a racially-charged debate over a Kelley Walker exhibition that many found insensitive in the context of a city with so much recent race-based unrest. [artnet News]

Were the early 90’s an exemplary period of shoestring-budget, groundbreaking curation? Molly Gottschalk argues that the cash-strapped art world of 2016 could learn from the past, as young gallerists weathered the bursting 1980s bubble with innovating programs not reliant on speculation. Of course, rents in art capitals were a fraction of what they are today. How much freedom do non-blue-chip galleries really have when one month of commercial rent in contemporary London or New York is equivalent to what they might’ve made in a year in 1991? [Artsy]

The Queens Museum’s new exhibition Chance Ecologies features artists considering the patches of “wilderness” that have reclaimed vacant lots around the borough’s booming waterfront. [Curbed]

“As a serious music journalist I am proud to note that my article about Insane Clown Posse for Baltimore City Paper made it to Faygoluvers.net and now a bunch of Juggalos are trying to prove how not-sexist they are by calling me a bitch” -Lexie Mountain, on the backlash her hilarious, insightful account of a night deep inside “The Dark Carnival.” [City Paper]

If you’re bummed you missed the group photo of hundreds of women artists at Hauser Wirth & Schimmel in Los Angeles, have no fear. On Sunday, October 23rd, Kim Schoenstadt and assistant curator Carmen Hermo will be restaging an East Coast version of the photoshoot at The Brooklyn Museum’s Beaux-Arts Court. [The Art Newspaper]

The New York Times profiles Participant Inc founder Lia Gangitano. Why can’t everyone in the art world be this cool? [The New York Times]

Want to spend over $3,000 on drawing supplies? Try the KARLBOX. It’s a collaboration between Karl Lagerfeld and Faber-Castell and it’s just as ridiculous as it sounds. [CNN]

Laurie Simmons made a film called My Art, which seems vaguely-autobiographical and really, really bad. [The Hollywood Reporter]

A Menashe Kadishman sculpture in suburban Tel Aviv, Birth, has become a bizarre site of pilgrimage for Orthodox women who sit on it and pray for fertility. They claim the artwork has mystical powers, which is probably one of the most unique public receptions to a piece of contemporary sculpture. [artnet News]

According to the rumor mill, the new iPhone won’t have a headphone jack but it will be waterproof. Are that many people dropping their phones in the toilet? [The New York Times]

A battery operated sculpture featured in a Kanye West video that features 12 naked pop stars and political figures in bed together including Taylor Swift and Donald Trump does not cost 4 million dollars. The sculpture, currently on view at Blum & Poe in Culver City, was early reported by the Times to be for sale, but now the gallery press representative claims the piece is not for sale. Unless, of course, the right buyer comes along. We’re just going to go ahead and speculate that West, a self-described genius, is waffling on the sales strategy and price. [The Los Angeles Times]

For those who thought that the Gawker suit was a one off case: Roger Ailes is hinting at a suit against New York Magazine for their feature on him and the long history of sexual harassment allegations that have followed his career. He’s retained Charles J. Harder for the case, the lawyer funded by Peter Thiel for the Hogan Gawker case. [Politico]

Because of heightened security surrounding the US Open tennis championships, the neighboring Queens Museum has decided to close until 9/11. This sucks. [ARTnews]

Iceland is home to lots of utopian-looking modernist churches. Combined with the stark landscape, these would be great locations for a sci-fi movie. [Dezeen]

Developers Henderson Land are building a 24-story building in Hong Kong with the goal of leasing to high-end gallerists looking for quality exhibition space. Hong Kong has a notorious property shortage, particularly spaces suitable for art galleries. The new building has high ceilings and a crane for moving artwork, and tenants such as David Zwirner and Pace have already signed on. [Financial Times]

Has the art world been getting lonely in a slow summer defined by gallerists and museums phoning it in from the beach? That might explain why so many art people seem to be planning something fun and social this week, from a Monday night campy screening of a Paul Morrissey film starring Warhol Superstars to open studios across Brooklyn. Wednesday, both BRIC and American Medium are hosting events for artists to relax and mingle, and out by the Hamptons, the Parrish Art Museum is throwing a Grey Gardens costume contest on Thursday. If you can’t make that trek, pass the time in Yiyang Cao’s debut New York exhibition. Friday, head to Bushwick for a night of openings at Tiger Strikes Asteroid and Underonk, both of which promise to be pretty fun. Saturday night, catch up on the latest episodes of fake reality TV show “Sad Girls Club” (trailer above) at the Anthology Film Archives, which is pretty much a party in and of itself. Finally, Sunday marks the last chance to score a smiley face portrait from Nobutaka Aozaki in Corona, followed by more open studios, DJs, and more at Red Hook’s Pioneer Works.

This might not be the best week for delving into heady art in Chelsea or museums, but it’s sure a good time to embrace campiness and fun, even in the stuffiest reaches of Long Island.

When I started compiling a list of art events for this week, I thought “this is going to be slim pickings.” There’s a stereotype that New York in the Summer sucks because everyone’s gone to the beach except tourists who stupidly vacation in Manhattan instead of also going to the beach. But that’s totally not true!

There’s plenty of cool stuff to do in New York this week, including a storefront installation from Jeff De Golier that opened today at FOUR A.M. Wendy White (pictured above) has a solo show of California-dreamin’ surf-inspired paintings (for those of you who are thinking longingly of the seashore) at Eric Firestone Loft. Wednesday, Xaviera Simmons unveils a new series of body-centric work at The Kitchen and Booth Gallery is (by happy coincidence) hosting a panel discussion on the future of figuration right afterwards. We’re looking at two group shows with big-name, smart artists at Team Gallery and Pace. Friday, The National Sculpture Conference kicks-off its three-day fest of all things sculpture, from figure sculpting classes to a supplies vendor fair on Saturday and 3D printing on Sunday. Friday night, take in a show all about children from Trevor Shimizu (there’s a Jessica Alba tribute!) and a group show at Lehmann Maupin featuring French-Algerian wunderkind Kader Attia alongside Tim Rollins & K.O.S. and Mickalene Thomas.

Saturday the Queens Museum promises to be “overrun by hoards of punks” for a celebration of all things Ramones, including a flea market. Then bounce down to Brooklyn for a group show at American Medium. But the real party happens Sunday, when a mysterious fest thrown by some very arty queers takes over a secret loft in Gowanus. If you’re not exhausted after that, be sure to check out Nancy Shaver’s solo show at Derek Eller—she makes diorama-like assemblages that make boxy grids fun again. And really, fun is the name of the game this week.

Monday’s been a rough day for us here at AFC as I’m sure it has for many readers. We’re still processing the horrific news of Orlando’s mass killing Sunday morning and it’s made writing much of anything difficult. Is there anything that can be said on the subject of guns, prayers, Islam, hate crimes and ISIS that social media hasn’t covered?

Probably not, that doesn’t diminish our need to mourn. One way we’ve decided to do this is to focus on queer events in this week’s must see events. It’s a small gesture to be sure—we’re not saving any lives. But it’s what we can do to say to the families, friends and lovers of those lost that, “you’re not alone.”

So, let’s talk all things homo-tastic: Monday night, Neil Goldberg revisits the David Lynch classic ERASERHEAD with a queer perspective. Tuesday, the unsung godfather of glam illustration Antonio Lopez gets his long-overdue retrospective at El Museo del Barrio, and two events at BRIC and Mitchell Innes & Nash bring queer/feminist perspectives to the city’s affordability crisis. Wednesday night, dyke icon K8 Hardy opens a mysterious solo show at Stap-On Projects while Thursday offers a one-night-only performance/installation from Scottish duo Ruby Pester and Nadia Rossi, who will be tackling sexuality, gender, and more at Bannerette. Friday night, head to Bushwick, where the Hot Summer Nights gallery crawl has some queer-tastic highlights in time for Pride month—be sure to catch Los Ojos’s all-LGBTQ group show and Vincent Tiley’s solo project at Christopher Stout Gallery. Also in Brooklyn Friday night: solo shows from AFC favs Björn Meyer-Ebrecht and Rachel Stern at Studio 10 and Black & White Projects, respectively, both located in the same building.

If you’re not politically/emotionally exhausted by the weekend, we recommend checking out the massive group show Of the people on Saturday at Smack Mellon. It’s all about the issues involved in this fucked, fucked election cycle. So when you’re feeling thoroughly anti-establishment, check out the Queens Museum’s Sunday panel on the visual legacy of punk.

It’s too late to wish everyone a happy Pride Month, but hopefully we can at least have a thoughtful one.